Green Yourself!

I "Heart" Profanity

26 June 2008

This is a few days late, I know, but I can't let it go, because George was my absolute favorite.

Like many my age, I used to sit around as a teenager listening to his LPs and getting high with my friends. We laughed and laughed and laughed and have not stopped laughing at (with) him for the quarter century that followed.

The thing that defined his comic genius (and all perfect comedy) was his ability to point out the obvious, call us all out on our hypocrisies and make us laugh at ourselves. There is no better teaching method than humor and I laughed myself all the way to enlightenment via his quirky wisdom.

He'll be sorely missed.RIP George.XXKHT

"There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls." ~GC

03 January 2008

It's my first post of the new year, and I had some lovely photos to share of snowshoeing in gorgeous Stowe with my gorgeous friend Stephanie and her even more gorgeous baby daughter.

I had good things to report about the passing of the old year to the new. I had good things, and good pics and then as Tilly says in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, "all hell done broke loose."

As I finally flopped down with my laptop on the first night of the new year, I turned it on and as I started the usual run from mailbox to site meter to comments boxes etc. I didn't make it half way through before ...pffft/click. Black screen.

No big deal. This had been happening with some regularity; but as the computer had yet to fail to turn back on again, it had been little more than an annoying delay. I turned it back on and started up Firefox again and again a few seconds into it...pffft/click/black screen.

One more time and I noticed the weak-with-age battery showed a few minutes power and no new power was coming in even with the new power adapter (which is another boring, ongoing computer saga)

Anyhoo...to make a long story short(er), my lappie is ailing. The following morning, I took it in to the apple doc and was heartened to find that it may have just been the crappy cheap (twice replaced now) adapter; so I bought a sturdier version from the officials and left hopeful and only 50 bucks poorer.

When I got home and plugged her in, I reached to phone my aunt B - who's been following the saga because a) she's my closest confidente and b) she bought me the danged computer in the first place, so naturally she's interested in knowing why an $1800 computer that's only 2 years old* is crapping the bed already.

I flipped open the 4 month old mobile and after failing to dial, I read "Searching for Service" next to zero bars on the screen - in my house - an unprecedented event (did I mention I was in my house?). I used my bfs phone to call my aunt and turned the mobile off in case it was cold, or needed a rest, or whatever...what was happening to my electronic equipment?!

I tried to ignore the phone and put together a philosophical and hopeful piece about the promise of a new year, highlighted with lovely pics of my gorgeous mini vacay in Stowe, but I couldn't prod my heart into it and everything came out exactly like what I hate about many blogs - all personal and about stuff nobody other than the writer or their very best and kindest friends would want to read (kind of like this post, only schmaltzier) so I closed up shop and decided to try again the next day.

Well, Eight in the morn arrived and the cock, rather than crow, dumped all my clean clothes all over the floor of our room because, "Are these clothes clean, or what?!" followed by, "Do all these sweaters go in the wash?"

Mmmppfh, I groused from beneath the covers where I was shielding myself from the glare of our interrogation-like bedside "reading" lamps with their 500 watt florescent energy saver blinding bulbs.

This is a common example of my bfs (aka"the cock') obnoxious habit of starting shit before I'm out of bed. Passive/Aggression before the quarry has opened her eyes. He's very aware that she can go from asleep to homicidal in one dumb sentence and a laundry dump, and yet, the cock, for inexplicable reasons, loves this game. What puzzles her is why he never fails to act amazed that she still wants to kill him 2 hours later when nothing can return her mood to the usual cheery morning version - highly enhanced by said ritual coffee guzzling.

The day degenerated from there. Next came the plumbing fiascos.

It started with the shower leak that the landlord was scheduled to come and look into. It seems that for some weeks or months, whenever we showered, water trickled down into the neighbors basement - the neighbors being 25 y.o. boys (going on 19), and as we're renters, they, not surprisingly, could give a rat's behind about things like water damage etc - or in my case, possibly falling, naked, through the ceiling of their basement; which appears to be possible because the form of our molded shower stall is clearly visible if you look up into the unfinished ceiling over their basement stairs - suspended as if by magic - but which logic suggests is probably not the case.

The landlord arrives to fuss around with it - presumably sealing it or whatever, but (for some reason) I'd forgotten he was coming and as he's leaving, he says over his shoulder, "So you don't need to take a shower today, do you?" "I guess not," I say, but inside I'm thinking, "of course I need a shower dammit! I haven't had one yet!" (I'm the type to take two showers a day, ecology be damned! and bad moods can cause even more showers because they are where I go to hide).

So the cock leaves for yoga, which I foolishly refused to attend because I didn't want to be a with the laundry throwing ape man of my waking nightmares - and while he's away, I began preparing lunch. As I'm standing at the sink, I notice my socks are getting wet on the bottom.

We have a pretty shallow sink in the kitchen, and I'm a very sloppy dishwasher, so at first, I blame it on over-splash and take my socks off and carry on. A trip to the other side of the kitchen, however, reveals a few centimeters of standing water, which is moving in the direction of my bedroom.

I grabbed a towel, and started mopping it up (What is this swiffer thing? Where's the cotton mop? WTF?) and now I've got a soaking wet bath towel that I can't twist out in the shower stall because our seal is drying till tomorrow - and I can't wring it in the kitchen sink because that's what's producing the water in the first place, and so I'm left with the toilet or the tiny bathroom sink. Six wring-outs later, the landlord shows back up to look under the sink cabinet. A flashlight reveals a rather large hole in the drain pipe. He applies a wrench. The drain pipe disintegrates onto the floor of the cabinet.

"Wow" he says.

"Yeah, look at that" I say.

So now I've got two large wet rugs, a dirty soaking wet towel, wet sweat pants and very cold feet, along with congealed eggs in the pan (where I left them) and he says,

"I'll be back in the morning to fix this"

"Morning. Great." "I'll just go find someplace else to be until tomorrow." Only I can't go anywhere, because I can't call anybody because my f'ing phone is dead!**

With no recourse, I scarfed down my cold eggs and went downstairs to visit with the 25/going on 19 y.o. neighbor boys, to share my woes (they love to hear me complain; it's a fact).

While I'm down there, my bf comes back from yoga, and after finding my note comes to find me and stands there staring until I agree to come back out with him to complete our errands for the day - one of which is picking up my newly sharpened skis to go with my spanky new boots (a gift from the bf, one point in his favor) so that we can go skiing tomorrow at Jay Peak.

First we stopped on what was supposed to be a quick errand to cash in some rolled coin my aunt gave me - when he annoys me by parking as far away from the entrance as possible, on the witches tit coldest day of the year, so that we can lug the cold heavy coin farther than necessary; after which he plops down in a lobby chair expecting to wait out my cracking open what turns out to be $220 worth of at least half pennies (by weight). Fortunately, a gentle, "Would you mind helping me?" gets him back up and by my side to expedite the process.

After returning to the house for a forgotten ski boot - "essential" he
claims because they won't release my sharpened skis without double
checking it against the bindings - a requirement, btw, I've never heard of but complacently fetched the forgotten boot anyway - again he backs the truck into a
place across the street rather than just drop me off in front and then parking -
a move he already knows I hate, but when I predictably say something, he replies in his best whiny imitation of me, "So what! I made you walk 3
extra steps!"

Finally, we drive to the ski tuners where he parks my door into a far away snowbank - (god forbid anyone harm the precious truck!) and as I'm halfway up the sidewalk to the store, he calls from curbside, "BOOT!"

"What?"

"You forgot your boot!"

I didn't even know how to argue. I was so amazed that he was calling me back to the truck he was standing next to at the time, to get the boot out myself so that I could carry it into the store, as to be struck dumb. He then proceeded regally, a dozen feet ahead of me, and as I passed him on the way to the counter, I threw him the most defiantly hateful look I could muster. It was like a scene from a movie where the pimp is showing the prostitute that he is the man and she's like, "Bring it, asshole. You only think you own me."

I childishly insisted on carrying my skis and boots out of the store and to the truck like a big girl, and sent him away after which I headed directly to the shoe store and bought a pair of winter clogs I'd been coveting for two years.

That's a woman for you. When all hell breaks loose - we buy shoes.

Happy Stupid F@#&ing!! New Years Everyone. I hope your year is going better than mine.

XXKHT

*old in computer terms yes, but not old enough to DIE

**as in dead dead. As in the sassy clerk at Verizon mall outlet says, "You have to take it to South Burlington. We don't do repairs here." I don't have a working car of my own, and I'm currently not speaking to "the car," so I guess I'm phoneless until someone gives me a ride because I'm not taking a bus on the witch tit coldest night of the year!

Music: The Police - Any Other Day

Here is a pretty picture of the happiness that was day one of 2008 before it turned uglified: